lenbrazil
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Post by lenbrazil on Aug 17, 2008 15:19:20 GMT -4
I was wondering what people opinions are about the Georgia/Ossetia crisis. Who are the villains and who are the victims? Western media portrays the Georgians as innocent victims and the Russians as evil aggressors. Russian and anti-Western media and CTs paint the opposite picture.
I think both views are overly simplistic. While small scale Ossetian attacks on Georgian civilian and military targets seem to have preceded the latter’s invasion of that province the response seems (to me) to have vastly disproportionate but then again so was Russia’s invasion of Georgia.
As to the status of Ossetia the Russians and West are playing by double standards. The situation is very analogous to Kosovo but both sides insists (or insisted) that one province has a right to independence but the other doesn’t. It seems both sides positions were determined by how friendly they were with the involved parties.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
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Post by Al Johnston on Aug 17, 2008 16:10:50 GMT -4
As you say, I don't think it is as black and white as often painted.
Perhaps it should be taken as a salient warning that sabre-rattling is still a dangerous pastime...
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 17, 2008 20:14:31 GMT -4
Well from what I have been able to tell there were milita in the breakaways that started causing issues so the Georgia army went in all guns blazing followed by the Russians. I'm not sure that any side is in the right on this one, they all seem to have over reacted. I suspect that the Russians reaction was more in showing people their muscles than actual peacekeeping though.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Aug 17, 2008 23:54:17 GMT -4
I think it's pretty obvious that Russia was setting Georgia up, and Georgia took the bait. Russia had an invasion planned and ready to go when Georgia stumbled into the trap. Whether that makes Georgia the lilly-white good guys and Russia the black-hearted villains is a slightly different issue.
It seems to be a war about oil, frankly. Russian wealth and power is currently built on their energy supplies to Europe in the form of natural gas and oil.
In Georgia the Russians want to shut down one of the only alternate pipelines from Asia to Europe. They bombed it three times to try to destroy it during their "peacekeeping" operation.
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lenbrazil
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Post by lenbrazil on Aug 18, 2008 8:28:20 GMT -4
Georgia might have recently tried to fake a casus belli with Abkhazia, the other brake away region. To make a long story short on May 21 of this year, parliamentary election day, ethnic Georgians in Abkhazia were bused across the defacto border to be taken to a polling station. They stopped along the way at a football (soccer) field in the village of Khurcha (in Georgian controlled territory) to be interviewed for TV. At about 2 PM they were shot at and the buses were blown up with RPG’s. 3 - 4 people were injured. The evidence however suggests the “attack” was carried out by the Georgian authorities and although heavy shooting broke out between the ‘perpetrators’ and the Georgian military no ‘Abkhazians’ were captured or killed. The relevance of this to the Ossetian conflict is that it suggests that the Georgian government was not beyond staging a false flag attack to justify cracking down on a separatist province. Reuniting those provinces was one of President Saakashvili’s campaign promises. Though the Georgians didn’t attack Abkhazia after the ‘Khurcha Incident’ “Batu Kutelia, the Georgian deputy defense minister, said that the Georgian population in Gali was not allowed to cast ballots. “Naturally, they [the Abkhaz side] are using various forms of provocations to intimidate them [locals in the Gali District]. Shootout serves just this purpose. However, the situation is under control. Our population, including from the conflict region, can freely go and cast their ballots” , the Georgian foreign minister made similar comments. www.civilgeorgia.ge/eng/article.php?id=18327. Attacks on the separatists may have been dissuaded due to the fact that with in 3 days a Tablisi based NGO and perhapseven the UN were suggesting the attack had been staged. Since the incident was reported on TV it also presumably helped the government. According to Wikipedia the president got 96% of the vote in 2004 but only around 53% in January 2008. On the day of the “incident” his party got 63%, it would be interesting to see exit poll reports from before and after the incident made it on to TV. According to the UN the Georgian government was also patially responsible for inaccurate inflammatory media accounts. It seems to me that worst case scenario Georgia staged the Ossetinan attacks as a pretext for its invasion best case scenario they used the relatively small incidents to achive what the president had promised to do and tried but failed to achive diplomatically, von Clausewitz famously said “War is Diplomacy by Other Means” Below is an excerpt from an article in the online version of The Georgian Times, an English language newsweekly based in Tbilisi. The paper doesn’t seem to be partisan, on it’s homepage is a reprint an Op Ed piece from Washington Post highly critical of President Saakashvili and an article complaining that the TV channels Eurosport and Euronews were anti-Georgia, sided with the separatists and that the latter uncritically used footage from Russian TV and was “producing news items full of lies and deceit”. That was written by the same person who wrote the article excerpted below. UN Blames Georgians For Khurcha Incident - Report states that Georgian civilians were attacked from Georgian side of Abkhaz border
The United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) has published a report on an incident which occurred at Khurcha, near the border with Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia, during the recent parliamentary election campaign. As a result of reports that the official version of what happened during this incident may have been untrustworthy, an investigation was called for, which largely contradicts the claims made by the Georgian authorities and confirms contrary claims made by election observers, outlined in the election report published by HRIDC.
On the day of the parliamentary elections, May 21, it was reported that two buses carrying ethnic Georgians were blown up by forces operating from the Abkhaz side of the de facto border. TV stations produced footage of the attack and President Saakashvili later visited injured passengers in hospital, also with TV cameras present. The buses were carrying people from Gali to Zugdidi to vote, it was reported.
The UN report, however, states that the passengers did not ask to go and vote but were “requested to gather” at the football field and wait for the bus. After a heavy burst of small arms fire, the buses were hit by rocket-propelled grenades. Though Georgia has claimed the attack was the work of Abkhaz separatists, UNOMIG has found that the grenades were fired from the Georgian side of the ceasefire line, from about 100 metres away from the buses…Following gunfire and the grenade attack of the buses, Georgian soldiers and security personnel started firing heavily towards the Abkhaz side of the border. As Khurcha lies within the demilitarized zone, there are no Georgian military stationed there, and the nearest base is around 15 minutes drive away along very bad roads, meaning that it would have been impossible for the Georgian military to react to the sound of gunfire or exploding grenades as rapidly as they did without prior knowledge of the incident.
www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=11796 Another Georgian English language news site funded by the UN and European foundations gave a similar account and added that other Georgian and foreign sources came to a similar conclusion: An investigative documentary produced by the Tbilisi-based Reporter studio has claimed that the Khurcha incident was pre-arranged and has indicated that it was staged by the Georgian side. The documentary, in particular claims, based on examination of the entire TV footage (including those which were not aired by the television stations), that a cameraman, who recorded the moment when grenades hit the busses, was in fact expecting that to happen with the camera standing on a tripod.
The documentary also includes interviews with some local residents, who say that two unknown men came to the village earlier before the incident asking locals to follow them as “people were needed for a video shoot.”
www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=18857 The UN report can be accessed by clicking the link below. Both sites quoted it accurately. It described the incident as “an alleged attack” which seems to further suggest they didn’t believe the Georgian governments version www.unomig.org/data/file/988/080723_sg_report_en.pdf As noted above the HRIDC, a Georgian NGO led and funded by Western Europeans indicated by May 24 the attack seemed to have been staged. UN obervers were at the scene in less than 24 and wuickly reached the conclusion that the grenades were launched from the Georgian side. Local witnessesalso seem to back the “inside job” hypothisis: Local eye-witnesses explained that security forces in civilian clothing were either already present when the shooting started, or present shortly after, and returned fire…Local eye-witnesses all stated that they believe this incident was staged by the Georgian (that is, their own) side, noting in particular the fact that the passengers were brought not to the voting station in the center of town, but to the soccer field, that so many journalists had been brought there in advance, that it was unclear who organized the busing, and the rapidness with which Georgian military arrived at the scene. www.humanrights.ge/index.php?a=article&id=2754&lang=en Report: www.humanrights.ge/admin/editor/uploads/pdf/HRIDC%20Election%20Report.pdf An earlier UN report concluded that “an almost daily flow of inaccurate Georgian media reports, sometimes coming from official Georgian sources, is fueling a widespread sense of uncertainty and alarm in the Gali district of breakaway Abkhazia. Each individual allegation may have had little impact, but cumulatively they have contributed to growing distrust and insecurity,ultimately increasing the chances of confrontation.” www.civilgeorgia.ge/eng/article.php?id=16997 daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N08/212/01/PDF/N0821201.pdf?OpenElement |
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lenbrazil
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Post by lenbrazil on Aug 18, 2008 8:37:15 GMT -4
I think it's pretty obvious that Russia was setting Georgia up, and Georgia took the bait. Any evidence for this "obvious" conclusion, might they not just have used Georgia`s rash action as an excuse to do what they wanted? Having an invasion planned isn`t strong evidence, this is a "truther" argument, they claim that US contigency plans to invade Afganistan were proof that 911 was staged. Do you agree that Bush and Rice etc are overblowing this in their portrail of Georgia basiclly as Mary's Little Lamb being hounded by the big bad Wolf? IMO the Georgians, Russians and US all over reacted. |
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lenbrazil
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Post by lenbrazil on Aug 18, 2008 8:41:06 GMT -4
I previously mentioned an Op Ed essay by a former Bush Administration top State Department official “Saakashvili ordered the assault last week knowing that South Ossetia would resist, knowing that his forces would have to take on Russian peacekeepers and knowing that Moscow has been spoiling for a fight. In fact, his own government had claimed for some time that Russia was preparing to attack.” www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081403053.html |
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Post by echnaton on Aug 18, 2008 9:23:23 GMT -4
It certainly appears to me that Russian is taking advantage of ethnic tensions to protect its hold on supplying and delivering natural gas to Westerns and Central European markets. Given Russia's history, it would not surprise me if they have not been stoking the ethnic tensions.
The U.S. position may be rationalized in many ways. But it seems to be a continuation of the Great Game between Russia an Britain that the U.S. picked up after WW2. A bid for influence in Central Asia. It is actually of some value to have influence in the region now because of the natural resources available in many of those countries.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Aug 18, 2008 11:03:17 GMT -4
I think it's pretty obvious that Russia was setting Georgia up, and Georgia took the bait. Russia was purposefully formenting rebellion in Ossetia. They issued Russian passports to ethnic Ossetians who were technically Georgian citizens, they funded seperatist groups, they recently passed legislature in the Duma that South Ossetia was to be governed from North Ossetia, which is a Russian province, they've been continually provoking the Georgians by violating their airspace, and they've shot down Georgian observation drones. The Russian military exercise "Caucus 2008" in July was an undisguised rehersal for the invasion. The Georgians aren't blameless - they were preparing for a fight as well, and they tried strong-arm tactics in Ossetia when a less militant response might have served better, but it is Georgian territory that the fight is over, even if they want to secede. No, not really. Georgia is a pro-western US ally who is seriously out matched, and Russia is essentially fighting a war for territory and oil. Russia has clearly made regime change - undoubtably to someone more compliant with Russian demands - their goal. The U.S. has to support a democratically elected government. And Russian control of the pipelines in Georgia would strengthen their energy hold on Europe, something that the U.S. has been warning Europe about since the Reagan days. |
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lenbrazil
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Post by lenbrazil on Aug 19, 2008 12:46:14 GMT -4
Russia was purposefully formenting rebellion in Ossetia. They issued Russian passports to ethnic Ossetians who were technically Georgian citizens, they funded seperatist groups, they recently passed legislature in the Duma that South Ossetia was to be governed from North Ossetia, which is a Russian province, they've been continually provoking the Georgians by violating their airspace, and they've shot down Georgian observation drones. The Russian military exercise "Caucus 2008" in July was an undisguised rehersal for the invasion. Most of this could have been a casus belli if Georgia attacked Russia, little of it justifies an attacks on Ossetian targets especially civilian ones. Presumably that’s why Georgia didn’t cite them. They used supposed Ossetian attacks as justification. In light of their seeming attempt to create a false flag justification with Abkhazia one must wonder if the Ossetian attacks were real. Also the South Ossetians have wanted to break away from Georgia since at least 1918 and the current push for independence started in 1988, it not like the independence movement was something invented by Putin. unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UNTC/UNPAN019224.pdf “[Russia] recently passed legislature in the Duma that South Ossetia was to be governed from North Ossetia, which is a Russian province,”I’ve never seen this claim before, please provide a citation. “they've shot down Georgian observation drones”The facts surrounding that incident (the Georgians said there was only one) are disputed. The drone was shot down over Abkhazia, not Georgia proper or Ossetia. The Russians claim this was done by the separatists. They also claim the flight was in breech of agreements which mandated all sides "refrain from all military actions against each other" in land sea and air. www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2284376120080422 The Abkhazians say they shot it down and 4 others (which Georgia denies). They also claimed that one of the drones was carrying an air-to -air missile. www.spacedaily.com/reports/EU_satellite_imagery_experts_will_seek_to_solve_Georgia_drones_row_999.html“The Russian military exercise "Caucus 2008" in July was an undisguised rehersal for the invasion”Do you have any evidence for this claim? If it were true it shows Saakashvili’s imprudence. The US carried out joint military exercises with Georgia at the same time (starting July 15) could not that have been seen as provocation? How would you feel if the Russians carried out large joint military exercises with Mexico and invited them to join the Warsaw Pact? How is South Ossetia’s right to succeed any different from Kosovo`s? Korsovo had been part of Serbia Middle Ages. South Ossetia had been de facto independent since the early 1990’s. Yes but for Saakashvili´s blunder the Russians would not have had an excuse to make their move. From what I know about the situation, if I were Georgian I’d be pushing for him to step down, he has been even more disastrous for his country than Bush was for the US. The main opposition parties it seems are also pro-Western. But I agree since he was democratically elected such a move can not be imposed from the outside. Once again Saakashvili seems to be the person to blame. Also unless I'm mistaken the gas from those pinelines aren't destined for Western Europe. |
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Aug 19, 2008 13:00:45 GMT -4
Also the South Ossetians have wanted to break away from Georgia since at least 1918 and the current push for independence started in 1988, it not like the independence movement was something invented by Putin. True, but if that really is what the majority of South Ossetia wants then peaceful political means should be used, not foreign military intervention. I read it in an opinion piece originally, which did not source the claim. But this story mentions that the Duma was discussing the issue in March. Upset. But that doesn't mean I would then invade Mexico. True. But who is to blame, the one who blundered or the people who exploit that blunder to reach their own ends? |
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lenbrazil
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Post by lenbrazil on Aug 19, 2008 17:59:37 GMT -4
Also the South Ossetians have wanted to break away from Georgia since at least 1918 and the current push for independence started in 1988, it not like the independence movement was something invented by Putin. True, but if that really is what the majority of South Ossetia wants then peaceful political means should be used, not foreign military intervention. But what if they can’t achive their goal through “peaceful political means”? So do you think Clinton, the UN and NATO were wrong to intervene in Kosovo and the rest of formerYugoslavia? Do you take the 18th century British view that George Washington and the rest of the patriots who by most accounts only had the backing of about 1/3 of the colonists were criminals and the Spanish and French were wrong for intervening? Howmany countries other than India gained independence through “peaceful political means” when the colonial power was resolutely opposed to this? Due to the poor English it is hard to understand everything but I didn’t see anything about that. Please cite a specific passage. So you can understand why the Russians were upset. My whole point is that the situation isn't as black and white as some western governments and the US media is making out. IMO there are no good guys, the Georgian, Russian and US governments are all acting irresponsibly. Both obviously. This reminds me of a traffic incident that made the news here. I can't remember the names of the drivers so I'll call them George and Russell. Russell parked in a space George was waiting for, so George punched him. Russell then went back his car got his gun and shot George to death. George didn't deserve to die but if he hadn't escalated the confrontation he'd still be alive. The analogy isn't perfect, it would have been closer if George punched Russell's friend Ossie 1st and there had been pre-existing “issues” between them but I think you get my point. |
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Aug 19, 2008 18:25:16 GMT -4
But what if they can’t achive their goal through “peaceful political means”? Then some other actions may be in order, but not terrorism. Truthfully I wasn't in the country at the time and was too busy with other things to be really informed, and I've never really researched it in depth afterwards. So at the moment I have no real opinion regarding Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia and US actions at the time. No. But the situation is not directly comparable, because the Spanish and French didn't invade the U.S. and take control of the colonies themselves. It seems unlikely that Russia's objective is to create an independent South Ossetia. Is Georgia really a colonial power here? It's my understanding that though South Ossetia has sought independence for some time that it has been part of Georgia since medieval times. Sorry, I can't find a better source. Understandably any searches for "Ossetia" turn up articles relating to the current crises rather than what happened in March. There may be no good guys, but there may very well be bad and worse guys. In your example Russell is obviously most at fault, and is the one who should be the most severely prosecuted by the authorities. By a similar logic Russia can be said to be most at fault and the nation who should pay the most for the mess. |
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Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 20, 2008 2:23:25 GMT -4
I think that Condie has one thing right, the Russians are still pretty much stuck in the Cold War way of thinking that other countries either have to be for them and against the US, or for the US and against them. They don't seem to have realised yet that it's possible for other countries to be friends with both them and the US.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Aug 20, 2008 12:26:05 GMT -4
Russia's conduct in agreeing to withdraw its forces but not actually withdrawing them is somewhat telling.
NATO also dropped the ball with their disappointing response yesterday. Russia called them "Empty Words", which is exactly what they were.
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